UK government urged to mandate solar panels on all newbuild homes from 2025
A cross-party group of MPs, environmental groups and fuel poverty charities have written an open letter to the government calling for solar panels and heat pumps to be mandatory on all newbuild homes.
The open letter, addressed to housing minister Matthew Pennycook, has been signed by a group of 35 MPs from the Liberal Democrat, Conservative, Labour and Green parties, as well as more than a dozen fuel poverty charities and environmental organisations including Solar Energy UK, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition and the Energy Saving Trust.
The letter is in regard to the Future Homes Standard (FHS), which is due to come into effect next year. With heating and powering buildings accounting for 30% of the UK’s total energy usage, the aim of the FHS is to ensure all newbuild homes produce 75-80% less carbon emissions than homes built under the current Building Regulations. This, in part, will be achieved by replacing current technologies with low-carbon alternatives such as heat pumps and solar panels.
When the FHS was proposed, the then-Conservative government chose not to mandate the installation of solar panels on newbuild homes, but the signatories want to see this changed.
In the letter they are asking the housing minister to mandate that all newly built homes in the UK be fitted with a “meaningful array” of solar panels, as well as the current promise of a mandate for heat pumps or low-carbon heat networks.
They add that “we should not be building houses in the next five years that will have to be retrofitted, at much greater cost, five or 10 years later”.
A recent report by the MCS Foundation, a charity founded to oversee the MCS standards scheme certifying the quality of renewable energy across UK homes, found that installing solar panels as well as heat pumps and batteries in new homes would result in thousands of pounds of savings for homeowners.
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For instance, the average cumulative energy savings from solar panel, heat pump and battery storage installation on a 3-bed semi-detached house would be £46,612 over the loan term of a 25-year mortgage. The report argues that these savings far exceed the upfront investment required to install these technologies in new homes.
David Cowdrey, acting chief executive of the MCS Foundation, said: “Mandating developers to put solar panels and heat pumps in all newbuild homes will not only save households thousands of pounds, it will also massively boost the domestic renewables workforce at no cost to the treasury.
“Years of delay and uncertainty have held back the shift to clean energy and heating. We should not be building homes next year and the year after that will have to be retrofitted in 10 years’ time, and so the government must now introduce the long-awaited FHS, with a mandate for renewable technology, without delay.”